Miss Manners for the Tech Set

Wired’s August cover story is “How to Behave: New Rules for Highly Evolved Humans.” It takes a scientific look at how people should respond to new social situations we find ourselves in thanks to the rise of social networking and the like.

The authors interviewed social psychologist, anthropologists and others to get a real look at how we can translate human social behavior norms into the new paradigm. For example, just as apes have a social hierarchy so should we –the article suggests we translate the rules to “friend” our boss but not our boss’ boss.

Some samples of the new etiquette rules are:

• Don’t lie with your Facebook photo.
• If you can’t buy it online, feel free to BitTorrent.
• Don’t hesitate to haggle on Craigslist.
• Don’t Google-stalk before a first date.
• Never broadcast your relationship status.
• Texting in the company of others is OK.
• Never BCC anyone.
• If your call drops, call back.
• Don’t blog or tweet anything with more than half a million hits.